1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to control of digital data. Specifically, it relates to systems and methods which allow for a holder of digital data to provide data to a third party subject to preexisting constraints on its use, and to alter those constraints after the file has been transmitted.
2. Description of Related Art
In today's world, the average user stores a huge amount of their life, and particularly their private life, in digital form. This can include everything from private diary entries, to photographs, to financial information. It is relatively easy for the consumer to protect this data when it is located on a private machine in a private residence. Generally, in such a situation physical access to the machine on which the data is stored is required and password systems to inhibit unauthorized users from turning a machine on are common. Even if the machine is connected to the outside world by a network, these computers can still be protected through the use of commonly available security software, hardware based firewalls such as those available with home routers, or by simply turning a computer off when it is not physically in use.
Even with the available security, however, the consumer generally has no control over files that they send to someone else once the data in those files leaves their private machine. Because of the nature of digital machines, virtually every time a file or other piece of digital data is transferred, it is copied. While certain products exist which attempt to defeat interception of private communications during the communication process (such as secure websites and public key encryption), these systems suffer from two fatal flaws. The first is that they are often relatively difficult for the private entity to use unless security is a major concern for them and second, they make no provision for the handling of the file once it has been obtained by a legitimate receiver.
This inability of the sender to control viewing, copying, forwarding or other use of a file by the receiver has proven to be a problem in a variety of areas. In the first instance, it means that secure documents, once they leave a first machine, are effectively no longer secure as they can be copied and passed on again without the sender ever knowing. Secondly, as social networking, and the barrage of constant personal information being updated to sites such as Facebook™ and Twitter™, has become more common, those who post personal information can have it copied, archived, and maintained even if they have deleted it and expect it to have been destroyed.
News reports are rife with stories of people's information being copied for illegitimate purposes. This can include concerns such as the use of baby pictures posted to social networking sites appearing in falsified adoption offers and posts of confidential and trade secret documents on WikiLeaks™ and related sites. Even outside of purely illegal uses, private pictures of celebrities have a habit of getting posted to public places and leaked to the news media resulting in embarrassment and occasionally damage to reputation.
In the legal arena, the recent explosion in “e-discovery” issues related to capturing of stored digital data has made litigation more expensive and also further exposed the issue of how difficult digital data is to destroy, even when done so for a legitimate purpose. These concerns have resulted in many people being afraid of providing family members and other legitimate users access to digital data because they don't know who could access, view, or copy it without them knowing and it coming back out later. Essentially, virtually anything created on a computer and stored on a network is permanent and may be found at a later date assuming sufficient resources are committed to finding it and it's been placed, at some time, sufficiently out of the original creator's control. Thus, once a sender has placed data on a machine outside their direct control, it's essentially impossible to control what happens to it, who sees it, and to what purposes it is placed. The ability to eventually obtain stored data has even spurred legal argument that a user be provided with a legal “right” to delete their data (specifically to disallow its use as evidence or discovery in legal proceedings), potentially even if the data is still persistently stored and actually in existence.
Not only can the inability to control digital data result in cases where the data is taken by a third party without the sender's knowledge, it can also result in potentially problematic actions by a legitimate receiver. For example, a common practice among teens currently (with up to 50% admitting to being involved in the practice) is “sexting.” This generally involves the sending of nude or semi-nude pictures of oneself to a boyfriend or girlfriend in a playful, teasing, fashion. The practice is also presumably carried out by adults for similar reasons, but that is generally not seen as being as problematic. While the practice could be considered anything from undesirable promiscuity to simply playful flirting with modern technology depending on social mores, the practice can result in some very problematic outcomes. The concern from the practice is often not so much the original transmission, as this is often between a sender and receiver that consent to the practice and may be no different to what they are doing outside of the digital communication realm, but the possibility of the photo being inadvertently or intentionally passed on.
Specifically, in order to make sharing of information with friends easier on social networks, some devices can be programmed to automatically post saved pictures from a mobile device to a social network account. In this situation, these pictures can then get posted to public sites resulting in at least embarrassment and often legal liability or even criminal threat. Further, the pictures, once sent, are often shared by the legitimate user with friends (in fun or in malice) and may continued to be passed on without the sender knowing.
The dangers in this connectivity are therefore that a picture sent in play by a person who didn't realize the implications, is suddenly available publicly and is often treated by others in a very different way than it is treated by the original recipient. Further, when this happens, even if the sender would like to retract the picture (or would at least like to prevent further distribution), they have no way to do so. Thus, it is an activity that once done, can never be retracted, expunged, or otherwise eliminated. While there are services that can be purchased that will search and attempt to expunge rogue files from the Internet to try and curb the issue, there is no way to insure that all copies have been deleted as copies may still be locally stored on computer systems which either cannot be accessed or are no longer connected to a network. These remaining files can then create a whole new set of copies.
While sexting is an extreme example of highly personal information being passed on, there are many other examples which are less extreme but just as damaging. Many teens and college students will post pictures to friends (such as on their Facebook™ account) which may show them at parties, drinking, or even carrying out illegal activities. While these are often not problematic prior to graduation and often include perfectly legal and acceptable behavior in the situations during which the pictures are taken, those same pictures are often not desirable to be seen by potential employers or in situations where such behavior may be considered as compromising. While many individuals take care to delete the pictures from public sites and segregating their personal from professional life, if these pictures ever got copied to locations outside their personal control, those pictures may still be available and can easily cross from personal to professional situations.